


Living Grief

by zaffre



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Comforting Dean Winchester, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s13e13 Devil's Bargain, Gen, Hell, Hell Trauma, Manly Embracing, Men of Letters Bunker, Pining, Post-Hell, Pre-Relationship, Sort Of, Spoilers, Worried Castiel, just a little bit, post episode, post rescue, some speculation about future events
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-22 20:25:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13771881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zaffre/pseuds/zaffre
Summary: Dean comforts Cas in the aftermath of 13x13.





	Living Grief

**Author's Note:**

> Happens post 13x13 - beware of spoilers beyond this point.

\--

Dean finds Cas on the roof of the bunker the night after they rescue Gabriel.

He’s sitting in a small patch of snow, looking up at the cold stars, shoulders drooped. Dean imagines his wings are probably drooping right now, too.

“Heya, Cas.”

“Hello, Dean.”

“Mind if I join you?”

Cas shrugs and continues looking upward.

Not exactly thrilled about the inevitable discomfort of wet, cold jeans, and yet unable to find any alternative, Dean kicks some snow aside and settles down next to Cas.

He waits a minute or so to see if Cas will say anything more, and when he remains staring resolutely upward, prompts, “What’re we doing up here, Cas? It’s fucking freezing.”

“I find myself troubled. It is…painful to see Gabriel…so diminished.”

Dean nods. “Yeah, it’s tough to see anyone looking like that.”

Cas just sighs, so Dean waits another minute, then adds, “I know Asmodeus had eight years to torture Gabriel, but he’s a tough son of a bitch. We get those stitches off and he’ll be back to sassing us in no time.” Dean adjusts his jacket against a gust of icy Kansas winter wind. “Plus, that’s gotta be just a blink of the cosmic eye to you guys, right?”

Cas huffs a laugh. It sounds sad to Dean.

“How quickly you forget. Time passes differently in Hell, Dean. Do you recall that your 40 years in Hell was only 4 months on Earth? If Gabriel truly was a prisoner in Hell this entire time, it has been considerably more than just 8 years for him.”

Dean’s stomach drops as he does the mental math.

Nine hundred and sixty years. Nearly a thousand years of torture for Gabriel. Fuck.

And it suddenly occurs to Dean that he’d also failed to consider the time difference for Cas’s captivity. How long had he been Asmodeus’ prisoner, trapped beside Lucifer, the bastard who’d possessed him for all those months?

“Cas…how long were _you_ down there?”

“That’s not important, Dean. Gabriel’s who we need to be focusing on right now,” Cas deflects firmly. “I honestly do not know what effect that duration of time in Hell will have had on him, how it will have changed him. It’s…disconcerting.”

Dean grunts in sympathy, but Cas just keeps staring upward, like the cold stars sharply twinkling above are going to give him an answer. Or comfort. One of those two things Dean can help with, but he just settles down further into his jacket and stares at his shoes.

Finally, after several long minutes, Cas speaks again, slower this time.

“I have experienced grief many times since my creation, none so painful as the times when I harmed you and Sam, or when you died or were grievously injured, or when my siblings were cast out of Heaven by Metatron, or when I realized the enormity of suffering I had caused after absorbing the Purgatory souls.

“But this is the first time I’ve felt grief because someone is still alive. I am unaccustomed to such pain. It is unsettling. How do you bear it?”

Dean shrugs. “Maybe you’re not supposed to.”

Cas swings his head around to look at him for the first time and Dean can read the anguish in his eyes. It guts him just a little, so he adds, “At least, not alone.”

“I don’t understa–”

Of course he doesn’t. “C’mere.” Dean acts on pure instinct and pulls Cas against him. Cas goes without resistance, shuffling slightly over so that he’s flush against Dean’s side. He feels warm.

“Some pain is too much for one person alone. That’s why you got family – they can prop you up when things get to be too much.”

Cas continues staring at him, even though it’s got to be making him cross-eyed from being so close, and Dean feels relieved. Something deep inside of him is soothed by having all of Cas’ attention – it feels right in a way he tries not to think about too often.

 “And we will be Gabriel’s family?” Cas asks. “He will likely need ‘propping’.”

“If he can keep his mou–, uh, if he wants us to, yeah.”

Cas considers this, then says, “God made the archangels the strongest of all of us, absolute, but he did not make them invincible. Gabriel will not be the same. Maybe will never be the same again.”

“Of course he won’t. You aren’t the same as you were eight years ago,” Dean says softly, squeezing the arm around Cas’ shoulders to let him know he means that in a good way.

Cas frowns at him.

“And I’m not gonna lie to you and tell you everything’s gonna be fine or that Gabriel will definitely find his way back or something else cliché like that. A millennium of torture, I can’t even imagine what that’d do to someone, archangel or not. I know forty changed me forever, in ways I wish it hadn’t.”

Cas swallows, and Dean swears his eyes start to shimmer just slightly, so he looks away and pretends it’s just the cold wind making Cas’s eyes glisten. Dean’s voice betrays him with a little waver, though.

“But I can tell you that neither of you will be alone. We’re a family, and we take care of each other. No matter what. Understand?”

And then Dean thinks about Sam walking around soulless, Gadreel’s rigid posture in Sam’s body, about Cas’ face warped by Lucifer’s possession, Bobby becoming a vengeful spirit, about so many other times when someone he cared about wasn’t ok. God, there are so fucking many.

“Look, Cas, I don’t know exactly how you’re feeling cuz I’ve never been in your exact situation. But when Mom came back, and we found out that she was a different person than we’d been brought up to believe, than what I remembered, it was hard. It’s always hard to see someone you care about not acting like themselves or not how you remember them.”

Cas shifts beside him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think–”

Dean waves him off. “It’s ok. The point is, there’ll be tough things ahead, times when you think maybe everything’s all gonna fall apart and blow up in your face. That’s normal. Well, at least for us, that’s normal.” Dean shakes his head with a small smile, then looks over at Cas again. “But we’ve been through enough that I can say with certainty that if there’s a way to help Gabriel, we’ll find it. Together. Ok?”

“Ok,” echoes Cas and he leans further into Dean’s side, his voice going muffled against his jacket but still perfectly rumbly. “Thank you, Dean.”

Dean lets Cas huddle against him and relishes this easy closeness. He tells himself he’s letting the nearness linger on the pretense of it being cold, but knows it’s for another unspoken reason entirely. And he ignores the hopeful leap of his heart as Cas lays his head down on Dean’s shoulder and exhales deeply.

They stay that way until Dean can’t feel his toes and the ass of his jeans is soaked completely through. Somehow, wet pants just aren’t all that important right now.

\--

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading my first SPN fic. I've been thinking about Gabriel nonstop since 13x13 aired, and a couple of days ago it occurred to me that time passes differently in Hell, and suddenly it multiplied Gabriel's potential suffering by a terrible number and I had to write something that addressed that. If I have made any errors with canon or interpretation of canon, please do not hesitate to let me know. 
> 
> See you again shortly...I signed up for a couple of Destiel Big Bangs and won some betas from Fandom Trumps Hate, so time to get writing! :D


End file.
